The Canadian Electric Vehicle thread

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Honestly, I'm not sure the kind of environmental impact and displacement of First Nations, of the James Bay projects would be allowed today.

That said, I'm also not convinced there isn't more hydro that Ontario can't exploit. Or that Ontario wouldn't just be better off building inter-ties to Quebec and letting HQ sell more into our market.

In fairness to Ontario, it may also be true that in light of the above-cited contemporary concerns, Quebec may not have been able to build what it did if it had started 50 years after it did.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Not sure if this belongs here or in the Airport thread, but Air Canada has purchased thirty ES-30 electric airplanes from Heart Aerospace in Sweden, giving AC a minority shareholder position:


Air Canada Signs Purchase Agreement for Heart’s Updated ES-30 Electric Aircraft

Hmm, didn't see that one coming. I heard about electric plane trials such as the BC float plane venture but I expected it to be several more years before a major legacy airline would acquire more than a couple trial planes for testing and/or publicity. Not because it wouldn't make sense, but because established corporations tend to be very risk averse and partial to inertia.

[Truenorth00]

They need to do something. The small 50 seater flights are becoming uneconomical at current crew and fuel costs. Either they go electric or cut service altogether.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Hmm, didn't see that one coming. I heard about electric plane trials such as the BC float plane venture but I expected it to be several more years before a major legacy airline would acquire more than a couple trial planes for testing and/or publicity. Not because it wouldn't make sense, but because established corporations tend to be very risk averse and partial to inertia.

Wendover productions did a really informative video about this.

For small regional routes, operating and maintenance costs are very high, and profit margins are razor thin. A 40% reduction in operating costs from electric aircraft translated to something like almost a 100X increase in profitability from $1 per passenger to just over $100.

[DoubleK]

Meanwhile in California...

A Tesla Megapack caught fire at a PG&E energy storage facility in Monterey, California on Tuesday.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Meanwhile in California...

According to the article, it was put out with zero injuries.

Compare that to your average coal mine accident.

[Acajack]

Serious question: don't vehicles with ICEs occasionally catch fire as well?

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I personally think RBC is wrong. But that aside, that is not what I'm saying. I've been consistent here. Renewables are cheap. Batteries are expensive. This leads to three choices:

1) Overbuild renewables massively and minimize battery storage.

2) Don't build any renewables.

3) Build renewables and use hydro and nuclear for dispatchable and seasonal demand, minimizing (or even eliminating) the need for batteries.

The Liberals tried option 1. The PCs are trying option 2. Most engineers will tell you to build option 3. It's exactly what places like Québec and BC are doing.

But hey. I guess since the Liberals got to fuck up the power market with ideology, we should let conservatives have their go at doing the same?

I see. Thanks for the reply.

Given that Ontario can't do dispatchable hydro though, isn't #3 not really feasible here?

I don't want Ontario to have the same fate as California where power is absurdly expensive and constantly faces brownouts and blackouts because of overreliance on wind and solar.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Serious question: don't vehicles with ICEs occasionally catch fire as well?

Significantly more often than electric cars, per vehicle mile traveled, or whatever other metric you like to use.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Significantly more often than electric cars, per vehicle mile traveled, or whatever other metric you like to use.

Thanks. You like me more than you think BTW.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Thanks. You like me more than you think BTW.

Creepy!

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

I see. Thanks for the reply.

Given that Ontario can't do dispatchable hydro though, isn't #3 not really feasible here?

I don't want Ontario to have the same fate as California where power is absurdly expensive and constantly faces brownouts and blackouts because of overreliance on wind and solar.

You don't need 100% of your power to be dispatchable. You need enough to cover diurnal and seasonal variations. Build that with nuclear or natural gas or batteries, whatever is cheapest. But build as much renewables as the stability of the grid can handle, to keep the rates down.

California's issues are sort of unique to California. And despite the dumb shit that goes around the right wing blogosphere fairly complex. I say this as somebody has actually sat through presentation from Cal ISO explaining their issues. We won't be having brownouts and blackouts here. Our risk is ending up with sky high rates that industry can't afford. First from a government that overcommitted to renewables when they were really expensive. And now with a government that doesn't understand how technology cost curves works and apparently can't bother to talk to industry.

I actually like the electricity system in Alberta and Texas. Full free market for generation. And in both those places, shocker, renewables are taking off and beating out everything else. If they are so expensive, why would those trends hold? It's not like those places are filled with hippy greenies.

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

According to the article, it was put out with zero injuries.

Compare that to your average coal mine accident.

Talk about a complete non sequitur

[Architype]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

According to the article, it was put out with zero injuries.

Compare that to your average coal mine accident.

Cars could run on coal too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CAN5nO1ag0

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I've heard this before but I'd really like to see some hard evidence on it, as not sure far northern Ontario is that different from far northern Quebec geographically (and especially hydrologically).

There is the Hudson Bay Lowlands. It's a giant wetland.

It abuts Hudson Bay and James Bay. Which means that gradients are low, and drainage is diffuse. Whereas the provinces of Quebec and Manitoba tend to have Canadian Shield adjacent and large rivers that effectively channel the drainage basins of significant portions of their regions (La Grande River and Nelson River, respectively), the northern part of Ontario has no real equivalent of that scale.

Ontario has some potential hydro developments (industry associations estimate between 4,000-5,000MW; for context the province has 8,000-9,000MW installed capacity now) but the projects will be smaller in scope, more diffuse and numerous comparatively, which makes the large scale transmission infrastructure required harder to justify. Many of these diffuse sources are exceptionally badly located with respect to load centres of the province. There's also the lack of big reservoirs in Ontario to ensure that flow can be metered up and down effectively. Manitoba has Lake Winnipeg and Quebec has La Grande Reservoirs to act as batteries.

Then one gets into land ownership issues.

The case for Ontario hydro development is much weaker than its neighbouring provinces.

[Coldrsx]

Pretty significant recall for Tesla.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...re-2022-09-22/

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

Pretty significant recall for Tesla.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...re-2022-09-22/

It's an over-the-air software update for the door window motors.

[...]

The electric vehicle manufacturer told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) it would perform an over-the-air software update of the automatic window reversal system.

[...]

Tesla said it was not aware of any warranty claims, field reports, crashes, injuries, or deaths related to the recall.

[...]

Tesla said during product testing in August employees identified window automatic reversal system performance that had "greater than expected variations in response to pinch detection."

After extensive additional testing, Tesla determined the vehicles pinch detection and retraction performance in the test results did not meet automatic reversal systems requirements.

Tesla said starting Sept. 13, vehicles in production and in pre-delivery received a software update that sets power operated window operation to the requirements.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...re-2022-09-22/

Pretty significant recall, indeed.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Talk about a complete non sequitur

We are talking about energy production, no?

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

We are talking about energy production, no?

No. It's a grid connected battery storage facility.

There hasn't been any generation at Moss Landing since Dec 2016. And if there was, it was Nat Gas and oil, they never burned coal there.

[thurmas]

GM will introduce EV Chevy Equinox priced at $30,000 for the masses for 2024 model . GM also announced 175,000 unit EV fleet sale to Hertz rental cars.